Towards a preference-based measure of the impact on well-being due to victimisation and the fear of crime

If the resources devoted to dealing with crime are to be used in ways that bring about the most benefits, it will be important to know something about how much better or worse one crime is compared to another. Ideally, one would like to describe the effects of all crimes — and possibly even the fear of crime as well — in terms of their effect on key elements of a person's life, such as her mental health and the degree to which she feels vulnerable. A ‘crime state’ descriptive system could then be used to categorise the effects of crime in much the same way as ‘health state’ descriptive systems are used to categorise the effects of ill health. By asking members of the general public to rank different crime states, it would be possible to generate a set of relative values for the effects of all crimes and this can provide an important input in policy making. If the crime states also contain a monetary dimension, the results could be used to generate monetary values that can be used in cost-benefit analysis, which is applied in other areas of government policy.